This may have curbed some fraud, but people continued to create replicas up until the end of the nineteenth century when companies started to create uniform chips. This counterfeiting caused saloons and gambling houses to start branding their own unique symbols to differentiate them from the forgeries. Clay and bone, however, are easy to replicate and forge fakes.
Gambling houses and saloons would give players pieces of clay, bone, or ivory to gamble with to keep track of what was being bet. Poker chips hadn’t been developed yet and instead players would use valuable items like gold and gold dust to bet with. Poker first took off during the nineteenth century in the Wild West of America. It seems like a simple piece of plastic on the outside however, it is packed with advanced technology on the inside to benefit the casinos. Casino chips are the casino’s form of currency when playing any game like poker, blackjack, roulette, and so on.
